Dried Apricots Stuffed with Mascarpone
Simple Recipes Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian Recipes Desserts Cheese Fruits Turkish
Taaadaaa! The first dessert prepared in the new kitchen. I will also tell you what the first meal was: a red lentil soup.
This weekend we finally managed to make the transition. The renovations that I thought would take a few months stretched to a whole year. That is why my posts have been fewer. The workers moved slowly... the jokes about Transylvanians really became reality. I do not even want to talk about the designers we hired. In the end, I took care of everything myself. Lumens, kelvins, varnishes, primers, paints, profiles, sliding systems - that is all I dreamed about. But the important thing is that it turned out well, I am delighted and slowly returning to my normal schedule. This site helped me a lot during this time, I basically cooked on autopilot, without thinking. I just followed the recipes as I had written them and surprisingly, they turned out well! 😋 I also followed a functional fitness program that helped me "burn off" my frustrations and maintain my physical and mental health. In fact, it even improved them, the best decision and change in my life.
And so here I am today, in the best shape of my life, enjoying these apricots with you which are really good served with tea (mint, Earl Grey, black tea). Cheers!
Ingredients
150g Turkish dried apricots (or semi-dried; I prefer these, they are meatier)
1 cup water
50g sugar
7 green cardamom pods
zest and juice from 1/2 lemon
125g mascarpone (or clotted cream)
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 vanilla pod (or 1 teaspoon orange blossom water)
toasted and coarsely ground pistachio
How to prepare dried apricots stuffed with mascarpone
- If the apricots are fully dried, soak them in 1 cup of warm water for a few hours (you can leave them overnight or from morning until evening). If they are semi-dried, they do not need soaking, skip this step.
- Put the apricots with water (use the soaking water for dried ones), sugar, lemon juice (about 2 tablespoons), lemon zest cut in large pieces, and cardamom pods (crushed with the flat of a knife to expose the seeds) and simmer over low heat for about 20-30 minutes, until they soften. If the water reduces too quickly, cover with a lid.
- Remove the apricots to a plate and let them cool completely.
- Meanwhile, turn up the heat and simmer the remaining syrup until it thickens slightly and becomes viscous (it does not take long, a few minutes maximum, but it depends on how much the water reduced while cooking the apricots). Let the syrup cool and remove the aromatics from it.
- Mix the mascarpone with milk until creamy. Add the vanilla or orange blossom water.
- Take each apricot and with a sharp knife, split it in two (the easiest way is to find the area where the apricot has that natural groove, it cuts easily there, almost opening by itself). Do not cut the apricot completely in half, just a little more than halfway.
- Fill each apricot with mascarpone cream (about 1 teaspoon per apricot). Dip the part where the cream is visible in the ground pistachio.
* I shell raw pistachios and toast them in the oven at 170°C for 10 minutes; then grind briefly in a food processor or crush in a mortar - Serve the stuffed apricots drizzled with syrup (if the syrup is too thick and does not flow easily, you can warm it slightly to make it fluid again).
Fill the poached apricots with mascarpone and pistachio
